Taunton police dive team pulls 1976 Chevy Malibu from Snake River

Saturday

Jul 19, 2014 at 11:44 PMJul 20, 2014 at 3:05 PM

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

The same week the Taunton City Council discussed unlawful dumping of furniture and other trash on sidewalks, members of the police department’s dive pulled a car and motorcycle frames from a local river.

Taunton police dive team commander Sgt. Matthew McCaffrey got a call Wednesday from the state Department of Transportation, letting him know that a DOT dive team conducting a bridge inspection saw some large objects in the Snake River.

McCaffrey said he assembled a dive crew the next day to investigate. What he found was a 1976 Chevy Malibu and two motorcycle frames, one for a 1998 Harley Davidson and the other for a 2002 Suzuki.

McCaffrey said the Malibu was last registered to a Norfolk woman, who would now be 49. The ID on one of the motorcycle frames, he said, came back to an insurance company.

The scenic Snake River has a history of illegal dumping, McCaffrey said, noting its relatively isolated location off of Field Street.

“It’s not a well-traveled road,” he said.

Other objects McCaffrey says have been pulled out of the river in the past include shopping carts and cash registers.

And a few years ago, he said, divers recovered a pile of bones, which turned out to be those of a deer.

McCaffrey noted that the Malibu had to be removed from the river, not just because it doesn’t belong there, but because police had to make sure it didn’t contain a body.

“There’s a lot of stuff down there,” he said, adding that portions of the small river can be as deep as 20 feet.

The City Council last week discussed how two-man crews on three trash trucks collected couches, mattresses and other items from in front of 90 homes and buildings the previous Saturday.

The council said it wanted to know if the city was getting stuck with the tab or if WeCare Organics LLC, which subcontracts out to Allied Waste/Republic Services to pick up all single-stream trash, was covering the cost, as part of its contract with the city for its new municipal trash recycling facility on Mozzone Boulevard.

Wes Gregory, WeCare’s chief executive, said later in the week that the city won’t have to pay for Saturday’s collection. He said the previously scheduled trash pickup was not considered to be an extra day’s work.